Bug#644701: libfile-which-perl: package description

Justin B Rye jbr at edlug.org.uk
Sun Oct 9 23:00:29 UTC 2011


gregor herrmann wrote:
>> So it's a safety-net to ensure the availability of a command that on
>> Debian is guaranteed to be available anyway?  
> 
> No, AIUI it's the possibility to get a which-like functionality from
> within perl without having to call external tools.

And there are environments where it's worth minimising the overhead of
system processes, even while you're accessing the file system in
search of external tools!  But if this is its primary selling point
then maybe it should be mentioned in the package description:

 Description: Perl module for searching paths for executable programs
  File::Which simulates the behavior of the standard 'which' program: it
  searches directories of a user's PATH (as returned by File::Spec)
  looking for executable files matching a given name.
  .
  On Debian /usr/bin/which is guaranteed to be available, but going
  through the Perl implementation can still save a fork.

-- 
JBR	with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
	sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package





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